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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107341">Knock</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife'>Penknife</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Friendship, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:22:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,019</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107341</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen has a late-night visitor.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cole &amp; Cullen Rutherford</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Trick or Treat Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Knock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/gifts">unavoidedcrisis</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cullen's days were busy enough to pass quickly, but his nights were unpleasantly long. This one seemed to have gone on for several years already. His head ached, and he tossed and turned, every extremity feeling chilled and numb despite the blankets heaped on his bed.</p><p>He could get up and make himself tea. That was definitely a better choice than getting up and contemplating a vial of lyrium. Making tea shouldn't seem like an impossible task. He had spent the day doing actually difficult things. He was, some treacherous part of his mind muttered, done with doing difficult things.</p><p>Except that he was cold, and lying here was unlikely to fix that. He hauled himself out of bed and made his way cautiously down the ladder to his office. Keeping numb fingers from slipping off the rungs required all of his concentration. It should have been easy. So many things should be easy.</p><p>He cut off that line of thought ruthlessly, and went to take down the tea and put the kettle on the fire. Then he stopped short, staring at the pot of tea already steaming on his desk.</p><p>The world felt abruptly like it was slipping out of his grasp. Had he made the tea earlier, and then forgotten? Had he somehow lost the last few minutes? If he couldn't trust his memory—the idea was nightmarish but all too plausible. If he couldn't be trusted—</p><p>"No, I'm sorry, I did it wrong," a voice said from behind him, and Cullen turned to see Cole standing just outside the doorway, looking distressed.</p><p>"Why are you standing out there?"</p><p>"Because you don't want demons to come inside," Cole said. He'd said as much, when Cole first joined the Inquisition, and that he found Cole's habit of appearing inside rooms unsettling. He wasn't particularly in the mood to be unsettled. But this also wasn't a conversation he cared to have through an open door.</p><p>"Please come in," Cullen said, putting the firmness he used with young recruits into his tone, and after a moment's hesitation, Cole did.</p><p>"I didn't come inside," Cole said. "One of your guards did. They're allowed. I just handed him the tea to bring you. He won't remember."</p><p>Cullen rubbed the back of his neck. This wasn't helping his headache. "Please don't make my guards forget you."</p><p>"Yes," Cole said, in an unhappy tone that sounded like he wanted to protest. "But you wanted the tea."</p><p>Cullen took a breath and let it out. Menacing demons, tempting demons, he knew what to do about. Helpful demons were outside his previous experience. "You've been writing me notes," he said. The notes were encouraging, from a certain point of view, and also reflected far too much understanding of his personal nightmares.</p><p>"Yes," Cole said, more brightly. "I asked Varric how to talk to someone if I couldn't be in the same room with them, and Varric said that people write letters."  </p><p>The tea really did smell good. It was possible that it reflected temptation, but since he'd intended to make tea for himself anyway, he wasn't sure what he was being tempted to do that he could reasonably resist. "You could knock," he said, getting down a cup.</p><p>"Knock?"</p><p>"On the door. To ask if you can come in. It's polite."</p><p>"I don't need to use the door."</p><p>"It's still polite." Cullen hesitated, and then got down a second cup.</p><p>"I could knock."</p><p>"Do you want a cup of tea?"</p><p>"I don't drink," Cole said.</p><p>Cullen poured for himself. Cole was still lingering in the room, and it occurred to Cullen that for someone who probably didn't sleep, either, the nights were most likely exceedingly long. "Do you want to sit down?"</p><p>"Yes," Cole said, and sat on Cullen's desk. Cullen settled into his chair, and drank the tea. He could feel its warmth spreading through him, his fingertips regaining their normal degree of feeling. "Can I ask you a question?"</p><p>"Yes," Cullen said, attempting to be polite himself, although he wasn't sure that his frayed nerves would be much improved by one of Cole's unnerving lines of inquiry.</p><p>"Why do cows have bells? Because their horns don't work," Cole said, which seemed to answer his own question, but then he went on, "But why is it funny?"</p><p>It wasn't the question Cullen had expected. "Cows have horns on their heads. But a horn is also a musical instrument. So you're thinking about one kind of horn, but for the joke to make sense, you have to remember the other kind." He cleared his throat, feeling extremely ridiculous. "Does that help?"</p><p>"Yes! Thank you. Solas didn't know, and Varric always says that if you have to explain a joke, it ruins it."</p><p>"Varric may be right."</p><p>"No, I think jokes are funnier when I understand them." Cole looked absurdly pleased with himself, and not very much like a demon at all.</p><p>"Do you have any more jokes that need explaining?" Cullen found himself asking. This was, at least, distracting, and between the fire and the tea and the admittedly somewhat peculiar conversation, the urge to get out the lyrium kit was receding to a distant whisper.</p><p>"A lot of them," Cole said. "Although Varric did explain about 'Knock, knock.' You have to say 'Who's there,' even if you already know." He looked thoughtful. "If I learned to tell jokes, would I be funny?"</p><p>"Do you want to be funny?"</p><p>"Varric says things that are funny instead of answering questions he doesn't want to answer."</p><p>"I'm familiar with the concept," Cullen said.</p><p>"That's a joke? Because of course you are, it's a thing people do. But you mean that you do it, too."</p><p>"It's … a sort of humor. Don't ask me to explain that one."</p><p>"All right," Cole said. He looked weirdly contented perched on Cullen's desk.</p><p>"Let's see. Why did the chicken cross the road?"</p><p>"Because it was afraid," Cole said seriously. "Or maybe because it saw something on the other side that would make it happier."</p><p>"Close," Cullen said, and set about trying to explain.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>One of Cole's notes to Cullen is delivered by messenger in the game, if you happen to be loitering in Cullen's office at the right time; it's also implied in party banter that Cullen has been explaining jokes to Cole, with mixed success.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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